


Solitude's Lament

by Zharena



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 02:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12003522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zharena/pseuds/Zharena
Summary: In which two boys reflect on loneliness.





	Solitude's Lament

“What was it like out there, Keith?”

Keith looked up from the concoction of Altean symbols on the tablet screen, rubbing the blurriness from his eyes, trying to bring the rest of the room into focus. It had been a slow week for the team, with no distress signals or enemy alerts to speak of. He decided that it would be worth taking a few moments to himself to do a little research on the symbol on his knife; one of the members of the Blade of Marmora had told him that the symbol had been chosen for a specific reason decapheebs ago, but its meaning had been lost over time. He figured that its was a letter from their alphabet, one whose obsolescence had long transcended their lifespans, but if that were the case—why hadn’t he come across it on any of the planets with ancient Galra technology? Yes, perhaps he may have just missed it, but a part of him wanted to entertain another possibility: that the symbol was a hybrid, one formed through a combination of languages so as to maintain obscurity in the face of Zarkon’s rule.

He just wished he’d spent more time studying the Altean language, which he swore had more symbols than any other language he’d seen back home on Earth. Which initially didn’t seem like the biggest deal in the world, admittedly. There was a chance that he could just run a side-by-side comparison and find an answer that way. So he gave it a shot. Initially, it went well.

That was, until half of the letters that popped up on his screen started to look the same and he could no longer tell just how many horizontal lines this one horseshoe-like character had. A pulsing headache had begun to rise when Lance finally spoke up—he’d been so absorbed in his thoughts that he actually managed to forget that the other boy followed him into the lounge.

“Keith? Did you even hear me?” he laughed, rolling onto his back and plucking the tablet out of his hands, glancing up at Keith. His hair was getting longer: strands of brown hair hung from his head, splaying out all over the couch. 

“I was considering it until you took the tablet out of my hands. When I was in the middle of reading it,” he added for good measure.

“Common courtesy dictates that you should pay attention when someone speaks to you.”

“Common courtesy also dictates that you don’t touch someone’s stuff without permission.”

“Yeah, but,” Lance said, dragging out the last word, “That tablet is technically Allura’s. So I win.”

Keith scoffed, brushing off the other boy’s perceived victory before offering him a small smile and asking for the tablet back. But Lance just tightened his grip on the slab, hugging it close to his body as his azure eyes stared at Keith, wide and expectant.

“What?”

“My question. You didn’t answer it.”

“What was it again?”

“I asked, ‘How did you survive out there?’ Like, in the desert.”

He hadn’t thought about that for a long time. Sure, he reminisced about the shack, of cool desert nights huddled in a sheet on the roof, staring at the sea of stars with longing. Of the sensation he felt, the urge to explore the expanse of dust and rock, of long nights spent decoding information gained from carefully calibrated instruments and ancient, dried-out tomes. Moments of solitude that he treasured and longed for, at least when his duties as a paladin got to be too overwhelming.

“I mean, basic survival skills? Just scouted out food and water, managed to get a generator to at least get some power.” 

Keith shrugged, trying not to get too in-depth. He hadn’t revisited everything else. Hadn’t thought of sleeping in his clothes for months, not after he’d taken up residence in the castle for a few weeks and realized that nobody was going to attack him here—not anyone he wasn’t prepared for—and that there were no scorpions to crawl across his feet in the still night. Of scraping soggy meat out of metal cans for sustenance, of running away from angry shopkeepers, bags filled with air and junk stuffed into his pockets, bulging out from beneath the jacket he wore. Of being afraid that each breath he took would be his last, of never being able to exhume the truth behind Shiro’s disappearance and that strange energy.

“Keith?”

“Huh?”

“You zoned out again.”

Lance was sitting up now—when had he done that? His gaze was level with Keith’s, but his eyes were just the slightest bit off from his own, as if he was afraid to continue the conversation. Keith’s reaction had ignited a flame of ambivalence within him, one that was markedly different and strange compared to the boy’s usual display of insecurities; normally, he could, at the very least, continue the conversation with some inner assurance but now, he seemed at a loss for what to say. They stayed like that for a long while, the silence between them punctuated by slight movements, awkward and premature for the conversation’s continuation. 

Finally, Keith cleared his throat and turned to leave, only to be stopped by a hand gripping his wrist, pulling him gently back to the couch. He cocked an eyebrow at Lance, who only blushed and looked away, daring to clarify his question only in barely-spoken sentences.

“I would have been so lonely. I don’t know how you did it.”

Sucking in a breath through his teeth, Keith closed his eyes, trying not to hear the creak of the shack in the middle of the night, the thumping of a rattlesnake at the door, the need to hear the idle chatter or whir of the Garrison’s lights in the background. Being left alone to his thoughts was peaceful, but practically being in exile was another feeling entirely, one that left him feeling hollow and agitated.

“I don’t know how I did, either,” he admitted.

Lance drummed his fingers on his thigh, only speaking up after doing it in succession a few times.

“It’s weird but, do you ever feel lonely around here, even with everyone around?” 

Yes, of course he had. Wandering through the castle’s lower depths had brought him through a labyrinth of tight walls barely wide enough to fit Keith. He once asked Coran what their purpose was—apparently, their intended use had been to be a last-minute shelter for civilians in the event of a war. At first, he would explore the paths they led him on, mapping out the intricate space for himself. It brought him a sort of peace that was different from the training room’s; here, he could still be mobile, but not easily located. As such, when he sought seclusion, he found himself drawn to the maze of gray metal.

But the longer he stayed down there, the more he heard the castle chirping and groaning, and with that, the more he imagined people lining up in here with fear in their bones and breaths caught in their throats. He stopped going there, but he couldn’t run away from that sensation for long: idle clicks morphed into fangs; whirs into the voices of who could have been. No matter where he went, that pervading sense of alienation stalked him, its impact only dampened in the shadows of another.

“Yeah,” he said. “Definitely.”

“Huh,” Lance huffed, tightening his grip on Keith’s wrist. “Weird, right?”

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little thing, I guess. I've been battling a nasty case of writer's block as of late - I think I may be pushing myself to write a little too hard, and it's been making it hard to get anything productive done. But hey, at least I was able to get this small piece out. Little victories. :)


End file.
